Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan

All Japanese history is new to me so everything exposed sounds truthful, as a starting point it was an interesting show and a more dramatic approach, mainly focused on iconic people and their motivations. Context and culture are underdeveloped in my opinion and just linked to war and conquests. It doesn't go deep on samurais persona. It could be any other soldier executing the same wars and it would be irrelevant to the show. When they faced japanese an chinese armies it felt the same, they were just more experienced warriors.

Considering there are big differences in the strategic approach of some japanese clan leaders it also doesn't go deep on why they took their approaches. It is reduced to something like "there is an opportunity to take control, i want to take control to be the lord of Japan". I think one of the things that make the show feel flat is that, the motivation is kind of always the same, and even when there is a more stable approach, it doesn't explain how that specific warlord came up with his view and his strategies. There's a few times where education is mentioned but not a lot on what are their principles or logic. In the China's invation campaign, some other great warlords/emperors of other continents were mentioned, but not if the japanese warlords had some prior knowledge about their history or if they were some motivated by them. It was an open reference, and the only concrete one was that China was always a big goal. So i would say the show is a review of wars and control shifts monstly in the XVI century. The biggest principle to feel connected to the characters is the general sence of constant war, as a defensive nature, so they eat to not be eaten. It might be that way, so that is not something i consider so much to base this rewiew.

I enjoyed the show mostly (as a war documentary I think), however I didn't like how many times battles, decisions or anything important is stated as the "ultimate", "greatest", "biggest" and a lot of other flashy words. At some point we started joking about this with my wife because we actually got confused, to the point we couldn't compare turning points or battles. Is not a history class but as an informative piece it kind of takes away the importance of some historical moments trying to expose everything as epic.

I don't know anything about this subject so I can't speak to the veracity of the information. However, it is overall quite engaging and the mix of dramatized scenes, information from their experts, and narration is good. However, I feel like there could have been better diversity in their "experts". I find it odd that they're essentially all British or American. I can't believe that they weren't able to find more Japanese subject-matter-experts to interview. That strikes me as a real issue with their production decisions.

Well made re-enactments and relevant interviews. The episodes had good flow and kept an even pace. The subject matter was interesting and easy to digest. Interesting to learn about an era of samurai.

Worth watching but bit fast paced. More details were required about other war lords... Any techniques of war not explained.

Every battle was tagged as " most critical battle of Japanese History"

Also historians were all non Japanese.. Hence no perspective of Japanese PPL and their thoughts were not included.

Hard to trust non Japanese historians..

Role of emperor was not clear. Warload himself taking decision without consulting emperor was bit strange.

Battle were not shown in detail Actors were good.. but the madness of samurai and the anguish of losses were not shown very clearly.

Over all a good watch.

While it is easy to get swept up into a sea of negativity and pick apart the fine details of a series, the reality is I feel this is a good gateway show. Could there have been more? Yes, always. However the director and production were not looking to create a flawless recreation, and openly state that they used creative costuming and sets for many scenes. The creative costuming and set designs were based on period accurate research, and then given a creative spin.

There are Japanese historians who appear in the series and speak, and a number of professionals who provide great quick info about the various events and battles. In truth, there was so much that happened in this period, a whole series could be made about just -1- historical figure such as Oda Nobunaga. Instead there was a broad review of the period that touched on many points.

I hope that the success of this series will prompt studios to take a more serious look at Japanese historical productions, and properly budget and dedicate more research and resource to them. This period in Japanese history, as well as many others, is ripe for film and deserves to be taken seriously.

So, if you enjoy Japanese history and want to quickly sink your teeth into this period, or introduce someone to this period this is a great series for you. LEt's hope that Hollywood in the future will take a serious approach to this kind of topic, and better fund and research their work.